On September 8, 2016, NASA launched the OSIRIS-REx space probe. This ship was the first to travel directly to a asteroid, land, take samples and return to its original destination: Earth. Seven years later, the North American space agency hopes to complete 100% of one of its most ambitious missions.
OSIRIS-REx arrived at the asteroid Bennu in December 2018, and after two years of analysis, it landed on the rock in October 2020. It waited a few months on the surface and in January 2021 it left for Earth again.
It has been traveling for two long years and is already in the areas close to our planet, since those in charge of the mission expect it to be on the 24th of this same month of September. NASA says through a statement on its official website that the capsule with the remains will fall in a desert area, without specifying the location, we assume for safety reasons. But the process will be on Sunday, September 24 in the morning.
As it approaches Earth, the spacecraft OSIRIS-REx It will not slow down while dropping the sample. Instead, when it reaches 102,000 kilometers above the world’s surface, a message from ground operators will trigger the release of the capsule, which will be sent spinning into the atmosphere. Twenty minutes after descent, the spacecraft will fire its thrusters to detour past Earth toward the asteroid Apophis, where it will continue investigating our solar system under a new name: OSIRIS-APEX (OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer), said the NASA on its portal.
For a moment, the capsule carrying the samples will transform into a fireball, a product of atmospheric pressure. A heat shield will help regulate the temperature inside the device, keeping the rocks safe at a temperature similar to Bennu’s surface.
A parachute designed to provide a stable transition to subsonic speeds will deploy first, approximately 2 minutes after the capsule enters the atmosphere. Six minutes later, about 1.6 kilometers above the desert, the main parachute will deploy, carrying the capsule the rest of the way to a 58-kilometer by 14-kilometer area of the military field. By the time of landing, the capsule will have slowed to approximately 18 k/ph.